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Saving Tarpon Downtown Building Called Risky

Mark Schantz/SUNCOAST NEWS

Tarpon Springs city commissioners moved to have this 90-year old building along Tarpon Avenue declared historic before it can be demolished. The building's infrastructure has deteriorated over the last 30-years with experts warning it could fall down.

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By Mark  Schantz | The Suncoast News

Published: November 10, 2007

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. - TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. - The city potentially faces some liability while it tries to protect a 90-plus-year-old building at 144 E. Tarpon Ave.

That was the warning City Attorney James Yacavone give the City Commission Tuesday night as the commission grappled with the fate of the downtown building.

Over the last 30 years, the two-story building, perhaps best known to longtime Tarponites as the onetime home of People's Hardware, has fallen into such disrepair that structural experts from a Tampa engineering firm recently recommend it be demolished.

Tuesday night, the commissioners voted to bar demolition of the building for up to six months. They want time to get the building declared historically "contributing," so the Historic Preservation Board and City Commission have a voice in what is built on the site if the current structure were razed.

City commissioners also want time to get a second opinion on whether other experts think there is a way to save the building.

During Tuesday's discussion, Yacavone told commissioners the only way to prevent the property owner, Frank Forbes of Forbes Furniture, from demolishing the structure is to evoke a six-month moratorium.

Yacavone, however, warned officials, "a commission decision to prevent owners from taking steps to eliminate an imminent danger exposes the city to potential liability and may well relieve the owner of liability should the building collapse."

It is the commission's decision to take a calculated risk, he told commissioners.

Yacavone said Joseph DiPasqua, the community services director, has told him the structural integrity of the building has been so compromised there is a genuine danger the building could collapse in the immediate future.

DiPasqua cannot safely predict the building will not collapse before it can be determined whether it qualifies for historic protection, the attorney said.

At an earlier meeting Toni Forbes, the daughter of Frank Forbes, told city Commissioners the building is so structurally unsafe it should be demolished.

An inspection of the building by Bracken Engineering of Tampa paid for by the Forbes family, discovered cracks or other forms of deterioration in the building's walls, framing and roof, rendering it unsafe.

Mayor Beverley Billiris said at the earlier meeting the property should never have been allowed to deteriorate to such an extent that it now faces demolition.

At the same meeting, former Commissioner John Tarapani, an historic preservationist and downtown property owner, told commissioners demolishing the Forbes-owned building would create a gaping hole in the quaint Tarpon Avenue ambiance.

Tarapani, whose grandfather, the late Abraham L. Tarapani, was a pioneering downtown merchant, asked city commissioners to imagine how many years it would be before anyone rebuilds at 144 E. Tarpon Ave. if the building were razed. Would it remain a vacant lot for the next 50 years? he wondered.

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